Thermodynamic stability of amorphous oxide films on metals: Application to aluminum oxide films on aluminum substrates

It has been shown on a thermodynamic basis that an amorphous structure for an oxide film on its metal substrate can be more stable than the crystalline structure. The thermodynamic stability of a thin amorphous metal-oxide film on top of its single-crystal metal substrate has been modeled as a function of growth temperature, oxide-film thickness, and crystallographic orientation of the metal substrate. To this end, expressions have been derived for the estimation of the energies of the metal-substrate amorphous-oxide film interface and the metal-substrate crystalline-oxide film interface as a function of growth temperature, and crystallographic orientation of the substrate (including the effect of strain due to the lattice mismatch). It follows that, up to a certain critical thickness of the amorphous oxide film, the higher bulk Gibbs free energy of the amorphous oxide film, as compared to the corresponding crystalline oxide film, can be compensated for by the lower sum of the surface and interfacial energies. The predicted occurrence of an amorphous aluminum-oxide film on various crystallographic faces of aluminum agrees well with previous transmission electron microscopy observations.